


Nectar

by Shamu



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Death, Dist is obsessive and creepy, Drowning, M/M, Terrible Metaphors, This piece is about a year old but! I think it still holds up, thanks for reading!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-01
Updated: 2017-11-01
Packaged: 2019-02-22 03:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13158444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shamu/pseuds/Shamu
Summary: A short selection of scenes exploring Dist’s feelings towards Jade and their relationship over time. Alternatively, how Saphir became Dist.





	Nectar

Jade was, to Saphir, like a flower. He often thought, in his younger, more childish days - that Jade and Peony should have been born with their names swapped. Peony was brutish and hard like a gemstone, undeservingly destined to embroider the thrones of emperors simply because of tradition and namesake. Jade, however, Jade was like a delicate flower. Stalky and thin, with lips like fine petals, his eyes the richest red that could only be compared to the rose. Even his skin was rose-like, white roses, and his heart was a mess of thorns.   
  
Saphir mused on this a little longer, thinking that… if he could change his name, or the meaning behind it, change who he was as so often he wished he could - he would be a hummingbird. A flittering, graceful thing - who never needed to touch the earth for fear its ringing heart would stop, and who spent its life revolving around its most precious, nutritious, delicious flower. Sipping nectar, that was how he wanted to spend his days - rather than tracking over miles and miles of useless, crappy snow. 

Today was one such tracking-through-miles-of-crappy-snow day, all because Peony and Nephry had wanted to go  _ice-skating._ But of course, the lakes closet to town weren’t frozen nearly enough - and that dumb ox Peony had of  _course_  already been out hillwalking, and  _of course_  he had found a solidly frozen lake and  _of course_ he had suggested with all sincerity and thickheadedness, that  ** _of course_**  they should all go there to skate.   
  
And,  ** _of course_** , he had protested - until his lovely Jade had decided that he was going, with a smile that tasted sweeter than any nectar and no sooner did Saphir agree that he should go. After all, what was the hummingbird without revolving around its flower?   
  
But, so sad, the hummingbird could not fly.   
  
Too brave, too shy, without a dot of practice and whole lot of shrieking - Saphir had slipped on the ice, skates with blades pointed directly at his beloved Jade, ready to cut him to ribbons. That was, until, Jade had set the ice in front of him on fire and Saphir, with one last hurried gasp that may have been the beginnings of a scream, disappeared under.   
  
The world went black. The pain was unlike anything Saphir had ever experienced, like his muscles had been peeled off from his bones and that his lungs had been sucked out from his throat, catching water. Every gasp that came involuntarily just brought in more water, lukewarm from the fire and yet seething through his insides like dry ice. And he couldn’t stop thinking, couldn’t stop thinking about the endless black that rushed down beneath his feet, drawing him deeper and deeper and its blackness would enter through his mouth, through his lungs, until there was nothing left to sense but that darkness.   
  
When he managed to bob to the surface, each breath a coughing pulse, he could see that there was no one was there, nothing but the ice and the snow and the deep dim quiet. And suddenly, it was like the pale, empty white surface was as frightening as the dark below, and Saphir wondered if, even if he managed to haul himself out, if he would soon have nothing left to sense but that brightness.   
  
He had wanted Jade, Jade’s soft hand around his own, to pull him free. But Jade was gone. 

The search party found him, stranded and alone, body half-pulled from the ice. He was alive, yes, and when his jaw stopped clattering enough for him to talk - he asked if Jade had called on them, if Jade had slipped under too, if Jade was waiting for him back home. Every answer was a no, and yet, when his skin was wrapped up warm again and he could feel his muscles reattach, toes able to curl and lips able to taste the hot cocoa his rescuers shoved in his face… all he could ask was, where is Jade?  
  
And finally,  _finally,_ when he saw that rose-petal boy again, whose lips looked so soft and so kind, that Saphir desperately wanted to see twist into the very slightest twinge of concern… instead slid into a smirk. A smile, even, and Saphir felt his heart roaring in his ears again, the heat finally returning to his face.   
  
Jade laughed, he remembered that, Jade laughed and said, “You have the tenacity of a cockroach”.   
  
And Saphir, named after the gem given to royals - the sparkling stone that represents fidelity and sincerity, Saphir who dreaming so desperately of becoming a hummingbird with glittering, soft and vibrant wings - compared to the lowliest, ugliest and most disgusting of creatures. All for surviving the ice.   
  
He looked at Jade’s cold surface, and disappeared under.   
  
—

Jade sat opposite him at the breakfast table, pale sunlight inching its way across the room. Saphir watched the way he cut his eggs, chopsticks running finely and precisely through the yolk, spilling yellow. He watched the way he cut fine pieces, dipped it in the yolk, and ate.   
  
He enjoyed these moments with him the most. Watching him eat was like watching God become mortal. How he reacted to his sensations, to taste, to indulgence. The way he turned his whites over in the runny yellow, so tactfully, all just to slather it in the taste he liked… something he  _liked._  Lorelei, he felt as though just in that briefest of moments, he knew exactly what Jade felt, what Jade thought, what Jade was sensing. Knew exactly what it was like to be him, to be so cool and poised and … just enjoying his eggs.   
  
Then Jade looked at him, the fire that killed Nebilim still in his eyes.   
  
“Are you going to eat? Or are you expecting me to hand feed you?”  _Just like I have to do to you with everything else,_ the insult was as clear as it was unvoiced.   
  
Saphir shook his head, sucked his lip in, and started to eat. Jade pushed his plate away, his chair squeaking in protest to the sudden movement, and left. Saphir wolfed his breakfast down carelessly, following after him.   
  
—  
  
Nebilim was  _theirs._ Their secret. Their precious memory. Their one and only desire.  _No one else!_ could understand them, no other soul had been their to witness her body strangled in the flames, charring even while she screamed. No one else had been in the cold, lonely snow - Jade’s magic redrawing her organs, her skin, her smile. No one else had seen her rip the limbs from that screaming man, his death still ringing in his ears even though he had induced countless others. No one else had shared, shed, seen so much blood as them.   
  
How many times had they killed her, since then? Cocktails of sodium thiopental as anaesthetic, pancuronium bromide for muscle paralysis, and potassium chloride to stop the heart. That was, of course, if she survived long enough for that - if she didn’t just disintegrate in front of them, a spew of blood and weakly gnashing teeth, with such laborious breathes… Lorelei, the breathing, the wheezing, choking bleeding, that’s what scared him the most.   
  
Only Jade knew that sound, knew how loudly it ringed in both his ears, even if his face said nothing, his lips barely ever moving from that stoic frown.    
  
“Next time, next time. We were so,  _so_  close!”   
  
_Acknowledge it_ , Saphir soundlessly begged,  _Acknowledge that this is ours. Our secret. Our dream. We’ll do it, we can do anything, anything. Please, Jade, Jade, please please say…_

Jade said nothing, throwing the syringe in the bin, his back to him.

—  
  
“Discontinue the experiments.”   
  
That was it. That was the end of all of it, those three, stupid,  _horrible_  words.   
  
Jade said it so casually, so obviously, so plainly - as though this was as easy for him as ordering his eggs for breakfast. Didn’t he care?? Didn’t he care at  _all_  for all these years of slaving? For all that both of them had given, dedicated, burned out of themselves - for all that  _Saphir_ had given, dedicated, burned? Why did he get to discontinue them, just like that, why did he get to rip away the only semblance of their happiness - the only thing Saphir had ever, ever been good at, just with the click of his fingers?   
  
How could he give up his smile, his happiness, his only chance at life _just like that_?   
  
All because of … because of a little failure? A set back? Could perfect, beautiful, clever boy Jade - could he not handle what mere mortals like he had to survive with everyday? Did Jade think he could just keep him on a leash his whole life, that with one simple tug he’d fall under the ice with him again?  _No!_  
  
No!   
  
This was  _theirs! Theirs! Theirs!_  
  
The only thing that had even been  _theirs,_ the only thing that… The only thing that had ever been  _his!_  
  
Jade didn’t get to take that way! He didn’t! J-just because he had forgotten what it was like, to be the happy little boy in the snow, fingers slipping loose snowballs and laughing as they hit Peony right in the nose. He didn’t get to forget all those times they’d slept over at each others houses, gently giggling about all the other stupid kids that could barely tie their own shoes while they were tapping into magic and machinery that generals knew nothing of. He didn’t get to forget the soft hums of his little songs that he used to sing to himself, the terrible poetry that he showed no one but had kept for years, the violin that he used to play. He didn’t get to forget and if he did… if he did then… then Saphir would have to remember for him. Everything Jade had ever abandoned, Saphir kept. All of his precious, forgotten memories - all of his precious, forgotten self that had died with Nebilim.   
  
“Goodbye, Saphir.”

—   
  
He would no longer be the hummingbird.   
  
He would be the source of nectar.   
  
He would become the rose.   
  
And all this, this metaphor that  _Jade_  would never!, never!! understand - because poor, shy Saphir had never been able to say anything. Not when they were twelve and at their happiest, whenever Jade looked at him and the universe hushed and there was nothing but that soft, so soft, smile. Not when they were sixteen and drenched in blood, a shared, dark laugh drifting between them over yet another failure. Not when they were twenty and Jade told him it was over, Jade told him  _goodbye_ and each and every time Saphir had had a chance to scream, claw, pound on his chest and kiss his lips and tell him  _‘I love you I love you Iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouilove…’_  
  
But he never had, and he never would! Because those days where over, long, long over! And though he was still going to recover Jade’s smile, Jade’s laugh, Jade’s heart that was lost amongst the thorns - he didn’t need to sip from his nectar  _anymore!_ That mana was his own, all his own. He wasn’t going to be stupid, runny nosed  _Saphir_  anymore, a stupid little brat who was forever washed out by Jade’s light. No, he was going to take that light, and he was going to shine brighter than that brainwashed idiot’s dulled surface.

 _Dist._  
  
Distant, Distorted, Dissonant, Dist.   
  
Jade may have pretty, but Dist would be more beautiful.   
  
Jade may have been intelligent, but Dist would be so much more clever.   
  
Jade may have been elegant and confident and perfect in every single way but it was Dist, Dist who would be more and more and more, always  _more._ Only then would he be good enough, able enough, strong enough to bring  _her_ back - if Jade had decided to accept withering and dying, well, Dist would simply have to bloom in his place. 


End file.
